The Blend: A West Monroe Partners Blog

Virtual assistant technology is primed to improve interactions across the healthcare industry; make sure your organization is ready to capitalize.
Virtual assistants are poised to transform the way people interact with information. The technology uses conversation-like exchanges to streamline everyday tasks and inquiries, and it is only going to become more prevalent: Amazon’s Echo was the...

As anyone who spends money knows, the way we pay for goods and services is shifting rapidly – many consumers are overwhelmed by the variety of options coming from financial institutions, merchants, fintechs, and even smartphone providers.
To capture this lucrative market, the payments industry keeps sweetening the pot for consumers, and what were groundbreaking perks and features just two to...

It’s one of our favorite times of the year – when Salesforce releases the upcoming updates to their platform! The Summer ’17 Release is chock-full of exciting new features that can add a tremendous amount of value to those on the platform. Below are a few of the upcoming changes we are looking forward to seeing in action.…

Fintech usually has a sexy connotation associated with it, so last week when I was in New York speaking at Bank Director’s FinXTech conference, I enjoyed the irony of being on a panel to discuss “The Unsexy Side of Fintech.” The conference primarily focused on discussing the impact of Fintech on the Financial Services industry, the current state of innovation, and what’s...

As the 24/7 news cycle turns away from the recent United Airlines issue everyone is probably sick of discussing, a new topic is beginning to permeate the back-page headlines. The regulation of customer service in the airline industry.
Regulation of customer experience is nothing new to highly regulated industries, just ask anyone in Energy and Utilities.…

After recently guiding a client through going live on Salesforce, I wanted to share a few tips in this third and final installation on my blog series for successful Salesforce adoption (click here for the first post and here for the second). I worked with my colleague, Matthew Savage, on capturing these bits of wisdom based on our recent work together for a financial company, as well as a...

Current State
In March 2017, the Trump Administration proposed The American Health Care Act to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and give Americans access to ‘truly affordable, quality health coverage.’ The proposed legislation was ultimately not presented for House vote, however, the Trump Administration remains committed to repealing the ACA and working with bipartisan...

Following up on a previous blog where I talked about customers not wanting us to hide the word “change,” I jumped at the chance to co-author this blog with a colleague in our Customer Experience (CX) Practice. Having worked side by side on projects together we have seen firsthand that CX and OCM make a great pair in not only delivering on our customer’s expectations, but...

You can’t fly through life without encountering decisions.
Perhaps you entered a grocery store and must decide between:
Buying regular apples
Buying organic apples
Perhaps you unexpectedly need to transport crew members on an already-full flight to Louisville and must decide between:
Incentivizing passengers to voluntarily give up their seats by offering compensation
Cancelling another...

In my last blog on managing change related to Salesforce, I discussed the need for organizational change management skills to support the successful adoption of Salesforce. I recently had the opportunity to work with one of our leaders in Customer Experience who focuses on Salesforce and implementing CRM technology. Together, Mallory Loe and I worked with a client that was implementing...

Apple created a new series of healthcare application development frameworks in early 2016. The new open-source frameworks, CareKit and ResearchKit, provide a standard platform that enables developers to build medically-focused research and care apps with built-in features related to end-to-end data encryption, privacy, and standardized data sharing. CareKit allows users to track their...

In my previous blog, I discussed my take on the future and potential of artificial intelligence, analyzing my own use of an Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service technology, and dreaming up a world where artificial assistants are our closest friends, our number one source of news and entertainment, and AI supersedes existing platforms in a post-digital era.…